Happy Thanksgiving! A List of Just a Few Things I'm Always Thankful For:

Life.

My good health.

My amazing parents.

My wonderful boyfriend.

My sweet little dog whom I miss.

My expensive two-bedroom apartment.

My fulfilling education at UH.

My amazing life in Hawai'i.

My awesome friends.

My great job.

Love. 

I'M SORRY OK?????

I'm sorry I haven't been updating lately. I could blame it on the stress and the hectic nature of the new semester, but I've decided to leave all excuses aside and simply face the facts.

I suck at blogging.

In the time since my last post, I have lost three followers. THREE!

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Anyway, I've decided to post this blog to:

1. Ensure you all that I am still alive.
2. Issue my thanks for those of you who are still sticking around. I am grateful for all of you.

Speaking of gratitude, it's been a while since I've posted about things that I am grateful for, and one of the key essentials to living a happy life is to constantly count your blessings.

So here we are, ten things that I am especially grateful for:

1. My job. I love everything about it.
2. My awesome boyfriend. I seriously lucked out with this guy.
3. My supportive parents. I love them to pieces.
4. My good health. We are such fragile beings, and we really are so fortunate to be alive.
5. My apartment. It may be expensive, but it's home.
6. My education. It may be expensive, but it gets me to where I need to be. 
7. My friends, both back home, and here. I would be so awkward without them.
8. Technology. Most days. 
9. LITERATURE. Where would we be without it???
10. My dog back home. I miss him so much, but he makes my parents really happy. 

This is Mika. He's a boy, and I'm pretty sure he's gay too. The love of my life is a gay mutt. Deal with it.

So there you have it, the ten things I woke up feeling grateful for this morning. Remember, 

.

I hope you all have a wonderful, fun, SAFE, and exciting Superbowl Sunday. 

I'm not going to tell you who I'm rooting for but...

LOST: My Sense of Composure (Last Seen Before the Holidays)

I've been off the radar for too long. This usually amounts to a long post of catching up, but I'm far too stressed out to lay out all the details of my holidays suffice it to say that although I miss my home, family, friends, and dog, I am very grateful that my boyfriend has been here with me to ease the homesickness. If you're still strung up on holiday cheer, I suggest you hop right past this blog and read something more suitable to your mood; my post will be filled with nothing but daunting thoughts and most likely cynicism. So here goes...

I am SO broke.

I make more money now than I ever have in my life, but I am more broke now than I've ever been in my life. WHERE DOES IT ALL GO??? Everyone was right; living in Hawai'i is horribly expensive. My monthly expenses are as follows:

Rent: $500.00
Tuition: $500.00
Bills/Utilities: $150.00
Groceries: $300.00
Total: $1,450.00

Let's just say that, if I'm lucky, I make juuust enough to cover most of that.

How the HECK am I going to pay for school???

I only took six credits last semester, which meant my tuition was completely covered by the measly loan I was awarded for the year. However, I will be taking nine credits this next semester. So, although most of it will be covered by the loan, I will still have to pay off the remaining balance every month.

I only have ONE more week of break?!?!?!??

Are you kidding me? Break just started, and I am still recovering from the wrath of finals! That's Hawai'i for you though, they don't really have a winter over here, so it seems as though they decided a sufficient winter break would be foolish. At least the semester ends at the beginning of May...yay for yearlong summers!

No no, nonono NO! I don't want to go back to school, I don't want to pay for my expensive tuition. I just, don't WANT to! I feel a temper tantrum coming on in 5, 4, 3, 2...

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...

That's enough. I'm done. I got all my crying and whining out of my system, and I'm ready to be an adult again. Honestly, it's not luck that feeds me and pays my rent every month, it's purely the hard work I put into making sure my commission check is as high as it can be. It all feels futile at times when I have to clear out my savings account to cover rent or bills, knowing that I have to start all over again with saving up to achieve my lifelong dream of volunteering abroad. It will happen though. I'm still young, and regardless, this will all be worth it in the end.

...Right?

I'm not just slaving away for a decorated piece of paper that will only serve as a framed piece of my soul right? Please tell me that this is all worth it, please. And if you know it's not, please just lie to me. I'm starting to lose sight of the whole purpose of forking over thousands of dollars for my education.

Eyyyyyyy...

Life as I Know It

With finals looming in the horizon, it is only natural that I suddenly develop a knack to think of everything else except for what I need to study for. Like most college students, procrastination is a mastered talent that holds detrimental consequences to my academic career if I indulge in too much of it. Anyway, I have done a lot of day dreaming ever since I locked myself away in study mode, and one of the things I often catch myself doing is looking through all the snapshots I've taken on my BlackBerry since I moved here. I have decided to share these photos with you in hopes of providing a glimpse into my new life.

Living in Hawai'i entails:

Nasty Bug Bites

 This is a shot of my ankle in an extremely swollen state as the result of a horrible bug bite.

I don't want to know what happened there suffice it to say that it healed rather quickly.

Chopping Off the Mane

I cut off over ten inches of hair due to the unbearable heat, and donated the hair to Locks of Love.

 The result has been so much easier to manage!

L&L Hawaiian BBQ inside of Walmart Instead of McDonald's

Huh????

Intruders in Our Home

 Some were cute...

Others not so much.

Sharing the Road with Wildlife

I spotted him as I was rushing to catch the bus to work.

Friendly Strays

This guy comes around to our apartment every once in a while, and he always likes to play with my boyfriend!

Ballsy Birds

He was going to stop at nothing to get to my vegan enchiladas!

Beautiful Beaches

 Waikiki Beach: a short walk from our home.

 The sand here is unbelievably soft!

Hanging out at Kaneohe Bay: the location where Pirates of the Caribbean 4 was filmed. No big.

Beautiful Storms

Daily Rainbows

It's been almost four months since I moved out here, and life has definitely been interesting to say the least. There have been hard times, and I've had my fair share of uncomfortable moments, but for the most part, I have truly enjoyed this entire experience. I can't wait for what's in store. :) How's everyone doing with finals? I hope you aren't killing yourselves over the stress. For those of you who do not have finals to worry about, I hope you have been enjoying your holiday season. :)

Stay tuned for my next post which will be the last installment of The Virtue Vows. This week, I have been focusing on Temperance, and I can't wait to fill you in on my endeavors!

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The Calm Before the Storm

Today is the calm before the storm of the semester, and I might not have time to blog as much as I would like to. Since it's Sunday and I feel like giving my little legs a break from walking, I've decided to wrap up my summary of the last couple days since I've moved here, and update on that desk I mentioned in the previous post. So, here goes my second post in one day (and hopefully not my last post for a long time).

In the midst of all the hustle and bustle and fun in the sun, it was almost easy to forget that we actually moved here to go to school. Thank goodness my boyfriend and I actually have our first class together. French 101 at 7:30 starting tomorrow morning.

Oh mon dieu.


I feel pretty confident that we have everything we need though. We haven't been running around in the city these past couple of days for nothing. After we came back from the beach, we had a little snack then went right into tackling the construction of our desk. Now, I grew up in a do-it-yourself family. When he wasn't cutting people up and operating on them, my dad spent his time building our sun room and creating our landscape. My mom liked to help him out, but she also did many things on her own such as sewing and cooking. So, thanks to my wonderful parents, using tools, designing my own clothes, and cooking are not foreign concepts to me. I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed helping my boyfriend put together our work station.

These slabs of wood were soon to be our wonderful work station.

It was pretty easy, for the most part, and we got to the finishing touches in under an hour.

After an hour of hard work, here is our finished product.

And this is what our work station looks like all set up in its rightful place by the window.

There are still many things that we need to add to our room. As you can see, we only have the memory foam mattress to sleep on right now, and soon we will get an actual bed to put it in. We also need a good office chair for our work station, and I might look for that on Craigslist along with our dresser and mirror stand. I'm thinking I might get us a coat hanger too; except I would like to use it for drying off our bathing suits instead of coats (for obvious reasons).

So, after our hour of roughing it with the desk, we scrounged up some leftover ingredients from when our roommate (his brother) made us enchiladas the night before and decided to reward ourselves with a taco night. If you haven't noticed from our previous post, we like to reward ourselves often after a long period of hard work. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with that; if anything, that just makes us work even harder and our rewards that much more enjoyable.

He cooked the meat and tortillas while I chopped the veggies and washed the dishes.

I would say we make quite a good team. :)

Yes, it definitely tasted as amazing as it looked.

So there you go, the days since I've moved here as best as I can remember it. I'm hoping that once I get back in gear with school my mind will be more focused, and I would be able to write better posts. Also, I am looking into getting a camera soon (and possibly a waterproof camera for my inevitable underwater adventures!). I have been taking my pictures with my BlackBerry, and I know they haven't been that great. I won't be able to afford a camera any time soon; so, for the meantime, I hope you can all bear with my poor-quality camera phone photos. 

Anybody starting school tomorrow?

Are you ready for it?

I'm so excited for school to start. This past year I didn't really get to go to school, and instead I had to work three jobs to support myself after my car accident, and also to save up to go to whichever university I was determined to get into. Speaking of jobs, I still haven't heard back from them yet. There was a bit of a complication with the background check because the company was unable to contact one of my previous employers. Now I'm worried I might not get the job because of that. I'll update more on that later, but I really really hope I get this job.

Alright, I think I'm going to order some pizza for myself and the boys tonight. I think we're all too lazy on this glorious Sunday to cook. The next time I'm on here, I may or may not be a complete stress ball due to school or work...or both. For now, I am just going to relax and enjoy my beautiful new life. :)

Aloha folks!

Nothing Like Getting Lei'd After a Beautiful and Productive Day

Ever since I landed, it has been a nonstop whirlwind of running around the city trying to locate everything we would need in order for us to finally settle down and get situated. I can't even remember what we did since I last updated this blog. Thursday and Friday have been a blur except for the fact that I do remember going to the beach on Friday, and again yesterday...and possibly again later on today. Yesterday, however, can thankfully be accounted for.

We woke up early and went to buy our school supplies, then we went across the street to the Ala Moana Center to get a printer from the Apple Store. Let me tell you about this mall. Basically, every store you can imagine, this mall has it. Now, I come from Orange County, where South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island are just a short car ride away; so, I know a big mall when I see one. The thing that bothered me about this place was that it was flooded with tourists, which I thought was strange, because shouldn't they be spending their time at the world-famous Waikiki Beach? Upon purchasing the printer at $30.00 less then what I originally bought it for in Orange County, I realized what the big deal was. The taxes in Hawaii are much less, and people come here from all over the world (especially Japan apparently seeing as it's officially the start of their vacation season over there) to stock up on all the name brands without the big tax hits.

Anyway, after we dropped the printer off at our apartment, we walked to campus to pick up our textbooks, and while we were there, we got notice that our desk had arrived at the nearest FedEx. So, off we went to pick that baby up. After doing all that, we felt that we deserved a little treat, so we walked around the corner to the Shave Ice joint that everyone was raving about to give it a try. Here are some pictures of our heavenly and delicious adventure.

This place has 4.5 stars with over 750 reviews on Yelp. Best thing about it? 
It's about a two minute walk from our apartment. :)

My boyfriend had the small cup of Cherry and Blue Hawaiian.

I had Pineapple, Passion Fruit, Guava, and Orange topped with sweet condensed milk.

Shave ice is unlike anything I've ever had before. My friends were right; it's absolutely delicious, and it really does just melt in your mouth! It's not like a snow cone where you have to deal with chewing the ice, it really just feels like yummy snowflakes melting on your tongue. If you ever get the chance to visit Honolulu, I definitely recommend Waiola Shave Ice. You will not regret it. :)

After we got our shave ice, we continued on our short walk to the beach where we swam in the amazing water and napped on the white sand.

Here are a couple pictures of the long canal that separates the beach from the city in which I live. It's so pretty, and I plan to go kayaking down it one day. 

This is a view of the left side of the canal which is where the city is. Where I live. :)

And to your right, ladies and gentlemen, are the hotels and the beautiful Waikiki Beach.

And what a beautiful beach it really is. :)

If you can't already tell, I absolutely love it here. After the beach, we went to buy some tools to put together the desk. More on the adventures of that later. On our way home, we stopped by the local key maker who was a cute little old man who told us funny stories while we waited for our extra keys to be made. Upon leaving, he told me to lean closer to him and close my eyes. That was when I got lei'd. Everyone here is so adorable and friendly. I think I made a good choice in deciding to move here. :)

I Made It; I'm Here; I'm Alive

Just a quick update to ensure you all that I arrived safely late Tuesday night to the beautiful island of Oahu. I made friends with the cab driver because she was Vietnamese, so we ended up speaking Vietnamese the entire 10 miles form the airport to my apartment. The cab fare ended up being almost $40, but she only charged me $30, and adamantly refused my tip offer. Instead, she offered me her business card and personal cell number for me to call anytime I need a cheap cab ride, or guidance on where to buy inexpensive food. Needless to say, my first impression of Hawaiian locals was top notch.

These past two days have been pretty hectic, but I've loved every minute of it. Before leaving Orange County, I had set up a job interview for first thing yesterday morning, and I think it went extremely well. I'm pretty confident in my performance during the interview. Now I'm just going to wait on the background check and hope that everything goes through, because the benefits are amazing with this job.

I really hope I get it.

Today, we signed up for new bank accounts. I guess to avoid a monopoly, all the banks on the mainland (ie: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, etc) do not exist on the islands. It was no big deal, signing up for a free checking account with Bank of Hawaii was a very quick and easy process. After that, we went to stock up on groceries so I wouldn't have to feel depressed every time I opened the fridge only to see one package of cold turkey and a half-empty bottle of Pepsi. We are now fully stocked for all sorts of food and snacks, and will be making our first real meal tonight of delicious vegetarian lasagna. :) The furniture is trickling in, and today we got two end tables for the living room, which go very well with our coffee table and TV stand. I will take pictures of the apartment later, as I do plan to do some de-cluttering and re-organizing. Right now, I'm just focused on getting settled.

So, it's been a lot of running around in the city, and I'm ready to simply relax. You're probably wondering if I've been to the beach yet, and the answer is, "Not once." That's fine though. We might walk to the beach after dinner tonight seeing as we live less than a mile away from Waikiki Beach. I know. I'm so lucky. :)

That's it for now, I promise to start taking pictures once I am able to move at a slower pace. Perhaps I'll take pictures tomorrow. I mean, I am planning to spend the day at the beach tomorrow doing nothing but bask in the sun and bathe in the wonderful clear blue water. Oh, and shave ice. I gotta get some.

I hope you've all been marvelous. :)